Former Vice President Joe Biden told a crowd Thursday night he had changed his mind and now supports taxpayer-funded abortion, putting him in line on the issue with other major Democrats for the party’s presidential nomination.
“If I believe health care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone’s ZIP code,” he said, according to CNN.
Biden was the only major Democrat who backed the Hyde Amendment, a provision dating back to 1977 that prevents federal funds from being used to fund abortion, as Christian Headlines previously reported. Congress regularly reauthorizes it as part of spending bills.
The 2016 Democratic Platform pledged to overturn the amendment, but Biden had voted for it during his time in the Senate.
Biden maintained he was a strong supporter of Roe v. Wade yet said he opposed federal funds being used for abortions. Biden is Catholic.
“Those of us who are opposed to abortions should not be compelled to pay for them,” he wrote to constituents in 1994, according to NBC News.
He told a Catholic publication in the 1980s that “abortion is wrong from the moment of conception.” He said as late as 2007 there was a “sliding scale relating to viability of a fetus” in law.
Such comments had concerned pro-choice Democrats.
On Thursday, Biden said his position had evolved on…
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